There’s something electrifying about a record that feels forged in the cracks between shifts, under fluorescent lights, and in the ache of repetition. Muffled Ears, the World Sounds Bad Quality, the new full-length from Reading’s Sightseeing Crew, pulses with that energy. It’s a record that grabs modern disorientation by the collar and turns it into something cinematic.
Written over a year split between manual graft, bar shifts, and desk hours, this is a body of work that understands routine from the inside. You can feel the grind in its rhythm, but instead of sinking under that weight, Sightseeing Crew explode it outward. The result is a kaleidoscopic blend of swirling sax lines, expansive guitar atmospheres and melodies that feel slightly bent out of shape.
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“Three people will die listening to this album,” the Bandcamp description of Nashpaints’ first record since 2020, Everyone Good is Called Molly, reads. “Zzz they will endup in the same place.” There’s no backstory to Finn Carraher McDonald, only mystery and angelic voicings spread across decaying pop tapes with a butter knife.
Lead single “Boyfriend First” is this seven-minute mass of swirling noise with guitar streaks you’d have to break your nails just to make. There’s a lot of color in here even as the static fattens and the synths undress, because McDonald has melodies coming out the eyes. “Boyfriend First” sounds more like Natalie Imbruglia covering Deerhunter-or maybe it’s Deerhunter covering Natalie Imbruglia-in a sewer tunnel than the Duretti Column…
Ween were the ultimate cosmic goof of the alternative rock era, a prodigiously talented and deliriously odd duo whose work traveled far beyond the constraints of parody and novelty into the heart of surrealist ecstasy. Despite a mastery of seemingly every mutation of the musical spectrum, the group refused to play it straight; in essence, Ween were bratty deconstructionists, kicking dirt on the pop world around them with demented glee. Along with the occasional frat-boy lapses into misogyny, racism, and homophobia, the band’s razor-sharp satire cut to the inherently silly heart of rock & roll with hilariously acute savagery; fueled by psilocybin mushrooms and an all-consuming craving for hot meals, Ween created their own self-contained universe, a parallel dimension…
Lucy Mellenfield began self-releasing her music while studying at the University of Southampton. It was a move to Birmingham to continue her education via a master’s in Jazz Voice that began to shape the songs on her debut album Tell the Water, She Will Listen. Twelve tracks produced by Chris Hyson take us through a sonic landscape of keyboards, guitars, saxophones and drums. At over 75 minutes in total, there is plenty to get involved with here.
The opening ‘Like a Feather’, which was released as a single, is a good example, starting with haunting piano-backed vocals before building to a crescendo of sound. The feather is a symbol of fragility, and that’s a theme that runs throughout the album. ‘Paper Thin’ reflects…
The original lineup of LA post-punks Wall of Voodoo are one of the most unsung groups of their era. Marc Moreland rivaled Gang of Four’s Andy Gill for his ability to pack tension into minimal riffs — and added Morricone flourishes that set him apart from all the other angular guitarists of the time. Joe Nanini was an equally inventive drummer with a massive arsenal of percussion instruments and rhythm boxes at his disposal. And frontman Stan Ridgway brought a distinct noir element, thanks to his use of synthesizers, paranoid lyrics, and a vocal style like no one else’s. Together, nobody sounded like them, and their debut EP — with its spine-chilling cover of “Ring of Fire” — and first two albums are all great.
Wall of Voodoo had a breakthrough with…
Not to be confused with Stranger Things: The WSQK Collection — a fun, in-world treat from the same season — this official soundtrack for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things includes much of the same that fans have come to expect: beloved classics and forgotten throwbacks that tie neatly into the plot of the show. While there’s no big “Running Up That Hill” moment here, the mixtape feel of the track selections makes it a decent compilation. One can imagine — if one is old enough — sitting in front of a boombox with the pause and record buttons compressed, waiting for just the right moment to bridge an early Michael Jackson gem with a Tiffany smash hit. Meanwhile, ABBA, Bowie, and Iron Maiden weave seamlessly with Pixies, Butthole Surfers,…
A live album capturing their first Japan tour in 2005, realized 33 years after their formation, is finally being officially released 20 years after the recording!
Emerging from the Canterbury, England musical community that also launched Gong and Kevin Ayers’ the Whole World, the whimsical progressive rock unit Hatfield and the North formed in 1972. Named in honor of a motorway sign outside of London, the group’s founding membership brought together a who’s who of the Canterbury art rock scene – vocalist/bassist Richard Sinclair was a former member of Caravan, guitarist Phil Miller had tenured with Robert Wyatt in Matching Mole, and drummer Pip Pyle had served with both Gong and Delivery. After a series of lineup…
The pearl of Aotearoa, Bic Runga, returns with her sixth album Red Sunset, an aesthetic blend of the familiar with a lively, blossoming charge.
In the decade since her last album, the largely covers project Close Your Eyes, and the 15 years since her last album of all original songs, Belle, Runga has expanded her indie-pop palette even further. The subtle electronics, old-school R&B, and French exotica first introduced on Belle are now joined by elements of gritty, lo-fi funk, nu-disco polish, and bedroom synth pop, adding up to a greater depth of sound that feels recognisably hers, yet slightly alien in an appealing way.
Returning to Paris – the city that birthed her stellar 2005 album Birds – inspired Runga and her partner Kody Nielson to start work on…
To parse the logic of Sex Mad, one must first inhabit the isolation of 1985 Victoria, British Columbia: a provincial capital where middle-class security doubled as a picturesque cemetery for the newly wed and nearly dead. Here, as the looming artifice of Expo 86 threatened to modernize the coast, the Pacific horizon acted as a literal dead-end and the Wright brothers’ basement as a laboratory. While the global hardcore scene was calcifying into a thudding caricature – The Exploited’s gurning pantomime merging with the metal-hocked bluster of the US crossover set – Rob and John Wright were busy deconstructing the very physics of the power trio.
When guitarist Andy Kerr completed the circuit, internal pressure reached a critical mass.
The guys who make up the country group the Mavericks began their professional music career performing together at rock clubs in Florida. Now you might think that’s a long ride from Nashville, but they found their way easy enough. Once they did, they didn’t leave everything they learned in those rock clubs behind though, and listeners won’t miss the rock & roll flavor that the Mavericks stir into a number of the songs on this 1998 album, It’s Now! It’s Live!
As the title foretells, this is a live album. It was made during a couple of shows the group did in Canada. This is great country-rock music done the way the Mavericks do it best, but the album is a little short with only seven tracks. The songs are fan favorites though, like…
The Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi embraces the imperfections and transience of creation. A potter might express wabi-sabi through the art of kintsugi, the mending of broken ceramics with lacquer mixed with dust from precious metals. Raúl Sotomayor expresses his version of wabi-sabi on the latest album from Sotomayor, his duo with sister Paulina, which represents a shift from seeking perfection to pushing sonic boundaries. “When I started making music, I tried to make everything sound clean and proper,” he said in a recent documentary on his creative process. “Now it’s how much can we clip it or distort it, or how much can we stretch it and it’s still gonna sound good?” The result is a record both calculated and chaotic, crafted by artists who have…
Released by Houndstooth (the in-house record label of London nightclub Fabric) in partnership with Mastery-a London sound studio best known for putting on installations and live shows with a host of performers-Quantum Sound is billed as a record “for listening with eyes closed.” You can listen to each of the comp’s 12 tracks in its entirety or, for maximum transcendence, an hour-long continuous mix crafted by composer and club supremo Hannah Holland, who also contributes two excellent productions of her own. The vinyl even comes with an eye mask if you buy it from Fabric’s website.
The air of peace and tranquility permeating this music is to be expected. But it comes from several unlikely sources, author and TV personality…
The second album of collaboration between former journalist and current label owner Eric Brace and talented wandering guitarist Thomm Jutz, Circle and Square is a comforting mix of harmonies and carefully constructed acoustic tunes. The duos’ guitars are here fleshed out as required by bass, drums and piano, adding colour and sonic range where required. This is not music to challenge the listener, but to provide a tasteful and thoughtful frame for the ten songs which make up Circle and Square. Looking at the world around them, the two singers share leads and harmonies over stories of art, of neighbours, of memories, of lost friends. But the tone is also upbeat, finding the positive of creation amidst the destruction of all we once held sane around us.
Subtle and sleepy, gentle and resonant, Eric Thompson’s shimmering take on country-rock takes Nashville’s emotive vocal style, throws in a pedal steel and rootsy rock riffs, and turns out a dusty, feel-good – if slightly too slick – album called Manic + Organic. Whether on the shuffling rock anthem “Get Back to It” or the humorous, old-school country of “It’s a Guy Thing,” Thompson’s band uses simple arrangements to evoke a true down-home feeling. The songwriting isn’t as gritty and powerful as that of Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams, or Kasey Chambers, but Eric Thompson is cut from the same thread – patterned by Gram Parsons, the Allman Brothers, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson – and Manic + Organic shows his potential to one day make a really spectacular record.
Callum Beattie speaks truth to the people. The Scottish artist’s penchant for connection has taken him from dusty barrooms to the biggest venues his homeland can offer, including a packed-out night at Glasgow’s epic OVO Hydro. New album INDI kicks off another mammoth year for the songwriter, and it’s packed with huge amounts, music that unashamedly aims for big crowds, and wide open spaces.
Produced alongside Joe Cross, comparisons range from Bruce Springsteen in his prime to Sam Fender or Stereophonics; honest songwriting rooted in everyday experience, Callum has a tendency to keep things raw, and not to over-think his studio arrangements.
As such, every track on here could be a…
Not quite a new album and not quite a compilation, Bobby Charles‘ 2004 release Last Train to Memphis is closer to a clearing-house for little-heard recordings than a proper album. Billed as a single-disc release paired with a bonus disc, the two-CD set contains a total of 34 songs, and since there is no distinct difference between the two discs, it only seems appropriate to treat it all as a sprawling double album. Jim Bateman says in his perfunctory, largely biographical liner notes that this album “fills in the years between his critically acclaimed 1972 Bearsville release and today,” which is certainly true, since all 34 songs on the two discs were recorded sometime between 1971 and 2001. The liners do detail the individual recording dates and lineups for the tracks, but it’s hard to tell when and where…
Albatross didn’t begin as a Big Wreck project. The band had broken up after the poor commercial showing of 2001’s The Pleasure and the Greed, and lead singer Ian Thornley had gone on to form his own successful band, simply called Thornley, and life as we know it went on. Thornley is a fine singer, with a voice that mirrors Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, and he certainly didn’t need Big Wreck to continue on with his career, but he reconnected with Big Wreck guitarist Brian Doherty after some years, and the two went into the studio to record with Thornley’s current band.
Albatross is the result, and the album was released under the Big Wreck moniker, even though it was essentially Thornley (the band) with the addition of Doherty as a third guitarist.
Acclaimed country troubadour Ward Davis steps into a new chapter with the release of his latest studio album, Here I Am, via MNRK Music Group. The 11-song collection arrives alongside the official lyric video for the focus track, “Downright Awful Stupid Beautiful Lie,” offering fans an intimate window into what may be Davis’ most revealing work yet.
Raw, reflective and unflinchingly honest, Here I Am captures Davis at a turning point. Written largely in the aftermath of a hard divorce and a season of personal reckoning, the album finds the singer-songwriter confronting his past while emerging with clarity and hard-earned wisdom. Long celebrated for his gritty delivery and sharp storytelling, Davis leans fully into those…